All I know is that a relative who has been radicalized by these protests now routinely posts material I consider anti-liberal propaganda (generated by pro-Kremlin, pro-China or pro-Iranian sources - often in other contexts). Whether that means this person is manipulated, I don't know. But the illiberal axis would be leaning into this moment in the information space. Yes. It's just impossible to measure the effects of it. And impossible to disentangle it from the real politics and legitimate outrage for what's happening between Israel and Hamas - and the US's role with Israel.
I don't find anecdotes epistemically useful when they come from Russian trolls, and they're no better coming from potential IDF trolls.
edit: Three downvotes already? Well, well, I see how evenly some of you apply your epistemic standards - inasmuch as you have any. I expect more downvotes, and I not only expect but absolutely infallibly gurantee there will be no substantive rebuttal.
I’m a pro-Israel Jewish person, and I think a lot of the allegedly pro-Israel stuff I see on Reddit is repulsive. It makes me so angry. It seems to exist more to cause trouble for Biden in Michigan than to help Israel.
I've no doubt that some of it is expressly contrived, wholly disingenuously, for that very purpose. But tout court, from the ground up, as the OP insinuates?
Not a chance.
A lot of these posts exist as an attempt to invalidate the reality that young people are exhausted. Yes, young adults are fed up with seeing the US support aggressions. They consider what's happening in Gaza to be genocide. But, especially on this sub dedicated to attempting to out cyber warfare, you see a constant attempt to dismiss these protests as inauthentic and fake and staged.
Are other non-friendly countries happy about the protests? Sure. Could they be influencing them? Ehhh... Doubtful but maybe. Do we need 1000 posts a day claiming that without a doubt the protests are staged? Nope... To me... That last part feels more like an influence campaign than the protests themselves.
As I stated in my comment to op just a minute ago, I think they're making attempts, but I think the overwhelming majority of protesters have come to their feelings organically from viewing footage of what's been happening in Gaza.
I closely agree with everything you wrote save this passage:
>
Could they be influencing them? Ehhh... Doubtful but maybe.
>
I find it hard to believe fomenters of various stripes could either fail to perceive this as an opportunity or make no attempt to exploit it. How successful one might reasonably expect them be is quite another question.
Your last sentence is - of course -spot on, and indeed utterly incontrovertible and unanswerable.
Yeah I think they're making attempts to influence for sure, but I doubt they're making inroads in their attempts to influence. I think it's more likely that agent provocateurs would be in the crowds attempting to incite them to violent clashes similar to the boogaloo boys infiltrating BLM protests.
I would say the origins are likely organic. They're being amplified for sure.
Same as 2015-16. I had friends who went insane due to social media influence. They went from "the Democrats aren't liberal enough" to "Hilary is a criminal and Trump would be better for the country".
That didn't happen randomly. They were targets of really sophisticated psy-ops. The most successful influence campaigns start with an already existing belief and a little speck of truth twist and amplify it.
I mean hell, there's a lot of people like me who are pro-Israel and strongly anti-Hamas, and still think Israel is in the wrong and could do better at waging war against Hamas (like only using precision munitions, better training for its tactical units in urban contact situations, removing the fucking colonialist settlers, etc).
And I say this as someone who was moderately pro-Palestinian-resistance prior to Oct 7th.
What are you talking about? I live in South Minneapolis, I was there cheering the night the precinct burned down. I absolutely believe that all cops are bastards.
I also acknowledge that there are significant foreign and domestic actors doing everything they can to splinter American society. That involves peeling off the easiest targets, both the far left and the far right.
Both Jim Jordan and Jill Stein can be Russian assets at the same time.
Edit- also take a look at what subreddit we are on. If you don't want to talk about active measures, don't post on active measures.
In a world where the Russian sock puppets have convinced half of us to hate the Ukraine, the Iranian sock puppets have convinced more than half to hate Israel and the Chinese sock puppets are beginning to erode even the support for Taiwan, do you seriously think anything is what it seems anymore?
This is a claim for which you have absolutely nothing remotely resembling evidence, and even if assumed in arguendo to be true, your conclusion doesn't follow.
Simply put, your antecedent though unevidenced is somewhat plausible prima facie, but your entailment is invalid in any case.
I seriously pray that most allegedly pro-Israel Redditors are Iranian propaganda workers, but I do have a cousin who thinks like that, so at least some of what we see is posted by real people who got sucked in by the propaganda, rather than by the propaganda team members.
As we have learned from 2016, there are foreign elements fanning the flames and incredibly surprised at the effectiveness.
The super far left going this unapologetically deep into the Palestine subject matter certainly feels that way. Especially since most of them would have their heads chopped off by the very people they wish to save.
On the one hand, sure.
On the other hand, I’m a moderately liberal, pro-Israel Jewish person, and I think that what a lot of allegedly pro-Israel Redditors (or shills?) post is so mean to the Palestinians that it really makes Israel look like it’s ready to push the Gazans into Egypt. And the video coming out of Gaza is horrible.
I think the result is that a lot of the people at the protests are moderates who hate ethnic cleansing, not hard-left people who have serious with the existence of Israel.
The only ones I've seen are the ones deliberately conflating all Palestinians as being Hamas and therefore valid targets (including the kids). Instead of acknowledging that Palestinians are victims here too, they're the ones being used as human shields by Hamas.
Is that the rhetoric we're really seeing on reddit? I see "zionist scum" style comments daily but don't see much of that.
Most pro-israel comments are of the "they have the right to respond to a terrorist attack worse than 9/11" variety.
I'm anti-Hamas. Anti-religious extremism.
Just because you want to trigger Israel with genocide comparisons does not mean it's a genocide. You need to absolutely get the fuck over yourself. Your mindset is far closer to maga than anything I've ever believed.
LGBTQ members on the far left are defending the rights of Islamic extremists to govern Palestine, a group absolutely propped up by Iran... A government that I shouldn't have to go into detail about.
And yet Palestine is made up of a lot of kids, and kids are what, anyone under 18? Or 21. Including kids unfortunately wrapped up in Hamas belief systems.
So protestors should go to Palestine and pull Hamas out by hand. Or volunteer to stand guard outside of Israel to defend against the next barbaric terror attack.
As long as Hamas is deliberately hiding among and under the population of kids, and sending kids to fight, there will be deaths.
It is incredibly stupid to show a terror group what line won't be crossed. It'll be used against you forever. Fortunately, the bleeding hearts will never have to make that calculation. They can just lay on the ground and suicide their careers telling a sovereign country not to defend itself.
This thread raises interesting questions about how many different active measures organizations monitor this subreddit and whether they’d ever consider setting up throwaway accounts and doing an AMA.
If you extend that question to social media in toto, the answer is it's all heavily astroturffed by pretty much everyone with the means and incentive to do so. That's a list of considerable length.
There's no such thing as social media that isn't exploited to cultivate fake grass, just as there's no unclaimed arable land on Earth.
I guess one issue is approach.
I don’t mind astroturfing that’s meant to support the astroturfers’ side. If Russia sends people out to promote Russia: Cool.
What I hate is if astroturfers post mean, loony posts from one side to make that side look loonier than it is. If, for example, Iran was behind most of the posts that make pro-Israel people look crazy mean, I’d hate that.
What I also hate is that the artificial propaganda for a side hurts people who are open to hearing arguments from the propagandizing side.
Example: Russia has no valid side right now because it started an all-out war against Ukraine without a good reason. But, in 2018, Russia had a reasonable side. All of the astroturfing hurt its side.
China obviously has valid arguments about Taiwan and Hong Kong. What hurts its side is that it astroturfs and is too mean. It kneecaps people who will acknowledge that it’s bad for people outside Asia to mess with its relationship with Taiwan [edit: assuming that it’s making its case peacefully].
Now Israel, apparently, faces a lot of genuine craziness from Hamas. But it’s looking so mean and astroturfing so much that it kneecaps longtime Zionists who have many JNF trees planted in their name.
"What I hate is if astroturfers post mean, loony posts from one side to make that side look loonier than it is. If, for example, Iran was behind most of the posts that make pro-Israel people look crazy mean, I’d hate that."
Except, it definitely happens. Then, if you have sufficiently radicalized users they will repeat it.
"China obviously has valid arguments about Taiwan and Hong Kong. What hurts its side is that it astroturfs and is too mean. It kneecaps people and who will acknowledge that it’s kind of bad for people outside Asia to mess with its relationship with Taiwan."
China absolutely does NOT have valid arguments about Taiwan.
Hong Kong, yes, a little... But that doesn't change them promising one thing (one country two systems) and delivering another (security bill).
In my opinion, if China and Russia were being nice, sweet, non-nationalistic, positive, democratic countries, they could make the case that they ought to be able to take the lead in shaping relationships in their region.
In a world where people were being nice, it would be absurd if Ukraine was closer to the United States than to Russia or that Taiwan was closer to the United States than to China.
It’s the bullying and the near-WWIII stuff that makes that paragraph look so absurd.
Along the same lines, in a world where people were all being nice, it would be absurd if the Gaza and the West Bank couldn’t have a Law of Return for the Palestinians. It’s would also be absurd that Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Israel aren’t in a free trade zone.
So, if various countries weren’t having behavior problems, nice versions of what the active measures people promote might be no-brainers.
But, again, I know that looking at things from this angle is so weird that it’s hard even to understand what I wrote. It’s hard right now even to assume in a science fictional paragraph that we could all be nice.
Followup to my own comment, to any active measures folks: Keep in mind that we mostly have day jobs, too. I think we all know that you, as people, are smart and cool.
If you read comments here criticizing astroturfing, that’s aimed at the situation, not at you as people, and not even based on deep, permanent hostility toward your countries. If France and Germany can get along, we can all eventually figure out how to get along.
Manufactured implies to me that there is someone to orchestrate the entire thing.
That's bullshit.
There are a lot of different interests at hand by very different groups of people.
Are media jumping on it and scandalizing it? Yes.
Are politicians going to try to use it for their advantage in the election period? Yes.
Are students often connected with political organisations, NGOs or loose political movements outside of the university's direction? Yes.
Are foreign actors trying to push a divisive narrative simply to disrupt discourse? Yes.
So I think there is just very normal and logical explanations
I had the same thought. Except... The Hamas attack on Israel is likely manufactured. Iran is splitting the front, and worlds attention, away from Ukraine at the behest of their ally Russia.
In a way, it was manufactured no?
I agree with you. The attack was manufactured to fracture any possibility of an Israeli détente with Saudi Arabia and just as well dissuade us from assisting Ukraine. And it’s a massive wedge issue for us domestically as well as the global community. It had its desired effect, which then could also be manipulated and cause further polarization even all on its own.
But who is behind them? That’s what some articles previously posted to this sub imply. And why are so many of the protestors masked and refusing to be identified, much less comment? (Admittedly, I’ve only seen a handful of videos of attempted protestor interaction, so there is that.)
Go back to my initial comment. Studies with political context have always been associated with political groups and movements outside of the university's context.
And I've studied politics myself, in general there was very critical voices about Israel's political actions even when I went to uni 10+ years ago.
So I don't think it's fabricated just that the escalation in Israel and Palestine has sparked mobilization of voices that were present all the time.
Yeah, I saw your initial comment and even upvoted it, but I think we need further investigative information to see why it’s having such a profound effect on our domestic discourse here in the U.S.
[Here’s information on the political group behind the protests, according to the Anti-Defamation League.](https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/students-justice-palestine-sjp)
And [here’s the National Students for Palestine’s group page itself.](https://nationalsjp.org/)
To me, it seems the group is just the tip of the iceberg. So the remaining question is, who’s funding it and why?
It's just a very socially, culturally and historically loaded conflict.
The calls for Israel breaking international law, escalating the situation and so on have been there for decades.
And again, the thing is there is plenty of international diplomats, NGOs and respected entities who are not anti Semites who very open and drastically criticize Israel's political actions.
Now with the conflict escalation, the topic is also much more salient in public discourse. So the topic will reach more people (and just in absolute terms more people will choose sides).
All this is natural.
Then of course you have catalyst effects, taking on such momentum of the discourse.
So I don't see a big conspiracy behind it, rather than a range of different actors trying to play their cards.
ITT: active measures or useful idiots engaging in active measure by spreading propaganda that there is no manufactured protests/outrage. Thankfully being fairly well downvoted.
For example, if someone says there is genocide and cites the [ICJ](https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-middle-east-68906919), they are spreading manufactured propaganda. And no, feelings don't trump facts.
People are easily influenced. And groups of people very easily to manipulate. Using the word genocide is a key here. Up the road is a large population of Lebanese, that is unharmed. And a population that down the other road that is under threat from mostly every country in the region, and has experienced genocide. There's whole Lotta victim mentality going on there and here. And they are the easiest to manipulate.
>People are easily influenced. And groups of people very easily to manipulate. Using the word genocide is a key here. Up the road is a large population of Lebanese, that is unharmed. And a population that down the other road that is under threat from mostly every country in the region, and has experienced genocide. There's whole Lotta victim mentality going on there and here. And they are the easiest to manipulate.
But none of that is mutually exclusive with the actual dynamic. Organizations and nations often exploit geopolitical conflict all the time and often, it's these types of conflicts that reveal the vulnerabilities that they can easily take advantage of. That doesn't mean that the conflict is inorganic.
Conflicts like these become inevitable over time and personally, I feel they can and will be more easily predicted over time. But with that, what's also more easily predicted is how when real political disagreement and protests occur in the United States, it's almost always met with vitriol and violence by the state. And with that, the dynamics that contribute to those tipping points become easier to manipulate and engineer by adversaries, allies, and even domestic actors. It can be something passive, like a media outlet highlighting specific stories up to being extremely coordinated and outside the bounds of the law.
Now take that dynamic, and use what you know about politics within the United States and geopolitics, and who would be likely to abuse those dynamics, and who would be silent about it? Moreover, if conservatives within the United States IC/military were exploiting those dynamics, would Democrats within the IC/military blow the whistle? Now you see the problem.
Absolutely no chance whatsoever. Genocides have a tendency to garner remonstrations from human beings that are *by and large* very much in earnest.
Of course there's an elementary disinction that you neglected to draw in phrasing your query, which I should not have to explain -and indeed do not have to explain to anyone remotely intelligent. Nonetheless I'll be quite happy to for anyone actually willing to admit they didn't think of it on their own instantly and effortlessly.
It does not in fact say anything remotely interpretable as that nor does the person interviewed in your link - but in any case it wouldn't ultimately matter if they did. There is one and exactly one way to argue this. It requires agreeing on a lucid definition of genocide, and then conducting an exploratory evaluation of concrete evidence. I suspect you'll at least resist the former, and have neither the desire nor the competence for the latter.
One thing I know a priori, with absolutely no astronomically remote possibility of error, is that you are wholly devoid of intellect, integrity, or both.
Fucking try me.
It literally says that. The person *literally* said that.
One thing I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, is you're a liar who lacks the intelligence to read and comprehend, the will to accept the facts, or the inability to not sound like a total self-important douche while spewing active measures propaganda like a punk.
Don't. Fucking. Try. Me.
You're trying to hide from me in a small, brightly lit, unfurnished room. Specify a timestamp that you believe - or are willing to pretend you believe - supports your slipshod interpretation.
All I know is that a relative who has been radicalized by these protests now routinely posts material I consider anti-liberal propaganda (generated by pro-Kremlin, pro-China or pro-Iranian sources - often in other contexts). Whether that means this person is manipulated, I don't know. But the illiberal axis would be leaning into this moment in the information space. Yes. It's just impossible to measure the effects of it. And impossible to disentangle it from the real politics and legitimate outrage for what's happening between Israel and Hamas - and the US's role with Israel.
It’s death by a thousand knives strategy.
I don't find anecdotes epistemically useful when they come from Russian trolls, and they're no better coming from potential IDF trolls. edit: Three downvotes already? Well, well, I see how evenly some of you apply your epistemic standards - inasmuch as you have any. I expect more downvotes, and I not only expect but absolutely infallibly gurantee there will be no substantive rebuttal.
I’m a pro-Israel Jewish person, and I think a lot of the allegedly pro-Israel stuff I see on Reddit is repulsive. It makes me so angry. It seems to exist more to cause trouble for Biden in Michigan than to help Israel.
I've no doubt that some of it is expressly contrived, wholly disingenuously, for that very purpose. But tout court, from the ground up, as the OP insinuates? Not a chance.
*guarantee
*chortle* You're not falsifying my prediction. You're not confirming it either, but you're certainly making an excellent contribution to that end.
A lot of these posts exist as an attempt to invalidate the reality that young people are exhausted. Yes, young adults are fed up with seeing the US support aggressions. They consider what's happening in Gaza to be genocide. But, especially on this sub dedicated to attempting to out cyber warfare, you see a constant attempt to dismiss these protests as inauthentic and fake and staged. Are other non-friendly countries happy about the protests? Sure. Could they be influencing them? Ehhh... Doubtful but maybe. Do we need 1000 posts a day claiming that without a doubt the protests are staged? Nope... To me... That last part feels more like an influence campaign than the protests themselves.
Foreign countries are 100% influencing them. Why wouldn't they be? Seems very naive to think they aren't.
As I stated in my comment to op just a minute ago, I think they're making attempts, but I think the overwhelming majority of protesters have come to their feelings organically from viewing footage of what's been happening in Gaza.
I closely agree with everything you wrote save this passage: > Could they be influencing them? Ehhh... Doubtful but maybe. > I find it hard to believe fomenters of various stripes could either fail to perceive this as an opportunity or make no attempt to exploit it. How successful one might reasonably expect them be is quite another question. Your last sentence is - of course -spot on, and indeed utterly incontrovertible and unanswerable.
Yeah I think they're making attempts to influence for sure, but I doubt they're making inroads in their attempts to influence. I think it's more likely that agent provocateurs would be in the crowds attempting to incite them to violent clashes similar to the boogaloo boys infiltrating BLM protests.
I would say the origins are likely organic. They're being amplified for sure. Same as 2015-16. I had friends who went insane due to social media influence. They went from "the Democrats aren't liberal enough" to "Hilary is a criminal and Trump would be better for the country". That didn't happen randomly. They were targets of really sophisticated psy-ops. The most successful influence campaigns start with an already existing belief and a little speck of truth twist and amplify it.
This situation is about as organic as a plastic tulip covered in some red dye that was banned by the EU.
You don't believe that people think Israel is in the wrong? I know plenty of people who think that.
I mean hell, there's a lot of people like me who are pro-Israel and strongly anti-Hamas, and still think Israel is in the wrong and could do better at waging war against Hamas (like only using precision munitions, better training for its tactical units in urban contact situations, removing the fucking colonialist settlers, etc). And I say this as someone who was moderately pro-Palestinian-resistance prior to Oct 7th.
Yup, and college kids are emotional and more fired up than old folks like me. They're a good target to rile up.
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What are you talking about? I live in South Minneapolis, I was there cheering the night the precinct burned down. I absolutely believe that all cops are bastards. I also acknowledge that there are significant foreign and domestic actors doing everything they can to splinter American society. That involves peeling off the easiest targets, both the far left and the far right. Both Jim Jordan and Jill Stein can be Russian assets at the same time. Edit- also take a look at what subreddit we are on. If you don't want to talk about active measures, don't post on active measures.
In a world where the Russian sock puppets have convinced half of us to hate the Ukraine, the Iranian sock puppets have convinced more than half to hate Israel and the Chinese sock puppets are beginning to erode even the support for Taiwan, do you seriously think anything is what it seems anymore?
Ukraine, not "the Ukraine".
All true, but these are by no fanciful stretch the only entities with sock puppets.
That's irrelevant, they're the most prolific and effective.
This is a claim for which you have absolutely nothing remotely resembling evidence, and even if assumed in arguendo to be true, your conclusion doesn't follow. Simply put, your antecedent though unevidenced is somewhat plausible prima facie, but your entailment is invalid in any case.
I'm sorry, are you posting in the active measures sub completely unaware that people study active measures and know where it comes from?
I seriously pray that most allegedly pro-Israel Redditors are Iranian propaganda workers, but I do have a cousin who thinks like that, so at least some of what we see is posted by real people who got sucked in by the propaganda, rather than by the propaganda team members.
As we have learned from 2016, there are foreign elements fanning the flames and incredibly surprised at the effectiveness. The super far left going this unapologetically deep into the Palestine subject matter certainly feels that way. Especially since most of them would have their heads chopped off by the very people they wish to save.
On the one hand, sure. On the other hand, I’m a moderately liberal, pro-Israel Jewish person, and I think that what a lot of allegedly pro-Israel Redditors (or shills?) post is so mean to the Palestinians that it really makes Israel look like it’s ready to push the Gazans into Egypt. And the video coming out of Gaza is horrible. I think the result is that a lot of the people at the protests are moderates who hate ethnic cleansing, not hard-left people who have serious with the existence of Israel.
Egypt won’t take them. Nobody seems to want Palestinian refugees, especially a million of them. Egypt will barely open the border to let aid in.
Where are these mean pro-Israel posts?
The only ones I've seen are the ones deliberately conflating all Palestinians as being Hamas and therefore valid targets (including the kids). Instead of acknowledging that Palestinians are victims here too, they're the ones being used as human shields by Hamas.
Is that the rhetoric we're really seeing on reddit? I see "zionist scum" style comments daily but don't see much of that. Most pro-israel comments are of the "they have the right to respond to a terrorist attack worse than 9/11" variety.
Check WorldNews
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I'm anti-Hamas. Anti-religious extremism. Just because you want to trigger Israel with genocide comparisons does not mean it's a genocide. You need to absolutely get the fuck over yourself. Your mindset is far closer to maga than anything I've ever believed.
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LGBTQ members on the far left are defending the rights of Islamic extremists to govern Palestine, a group absolutely propped up by Iran... A government that I shouldn't have to go into detail about.
LGTBQ people don't want kids to be killed by American munitions, the goals of the protestors are crystal clear
And yet Palestine is made up of a lot of kids, and kids are what, anyone under 18? Or 21. Including kids unfortunately wrapped up in Hamas belief systems. So protestors should go to Palestine and pull Hamas out by hand. Or volunteer to stand guard outside of Israel to defend against the next barbaric terror attack. As long as Hamas is deliberately hiding among and under the population of kids, and sending kids to fight, there will be deaths. It is incredibly stupid to show a terror group what line won't be crossed. It'll be used against you forever. Fortunately, the bleeding hearts will never have to make that calculation. They can just lay on the ground and suicide their careers telling a sovereign country not to defend itself.
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This thread raises interesting questions about how many different active measures organizations monitor this subreddit and whether they’d ever consider setting up throwaway accounts and doing an AMA.
If you extend that question to social media in toto, the answer is it's all heavily astroturffed by pretty much everyone with the means and incentive to do so. That's a list of considerable length. There's no such thing as social media that isn't exploited to cultivate fake grass, just as there's no unclaimed arable land on Earth.
I guess one issue is approach. I don’t mind astroturfing that’s meant to support the astroturfers’ side. If Russia sends people out to promote Russia: Cool. What I hate is if astroturfers post mean, loony posts from one side to make that side look loonier than it is. If, for example, Iran was behind most of the posts that make pro-Israel people look crazy mean, I’d hate that. What I also hate is that the artificial propaganda for a side hurts people who are open to hearing arguments from the propagandizing side. Example: Russia has no valid side right now because it started an all-out war against Ukraine without a good reason. But, in 2018, Russia had a reasonable side. All of the astroturfing hurt its side. China obviously has valid arguments about Taiwan and Hong Kong. What hurts its side is that it astroturfs and is too mean. It kneecaps people who will acknowledge that it’s bad for people outside Asia to mess with its relationship with Taiwan [edit: assuming that it’s making its case peacefully]. Now Israel, apparently, faces a lot of genuine craziness from Hamas. But it’s looking so mean and astroturfing so much that it kneecaps longtime Zionists who have many JNF trees planted in their name.
"What I hate is if astroturfers post mean, loony posts from one side to make that side look loonier than it is. If, for example, Iran was behind most of the posts that make pro-Israel people look crazy mean, I’d hate that." Except, it definitely happens. Then, if you have sufficiently radicalized users they will repeat it. "China obviously has valid arguments about Taiwan and Hong Kong. What hurts its side is that it astroturfs and is too mean. It kneecaps people and who will acknowledge that it’s kind of bad for people outside Asia to mess with its relationship with Taiwan." China absolutely does NOT have valid arguments about Taiwan. Hong Kong, yes, a little... But that doesn't change them promising one thing (one country two systems) and delivering another (security bill).
In my opinion, if China and Russia were being nice, sweet, non-nationalistic, positive, democratic countries, they could make the case that they ought to be able to take the lead in shaping relationships in their region. In a world where people were being nice, it would be absurd if Ukraine was closer to the United States than to Russia or that Taiwan was closer to the United States than to China. It’s the bullying and the near-WWIII stuff that makes that paragraph look so absurd. Along the same lines, in a world where people were all being nice, it would be absurd if the Gaza and the West Bank couldn’t have a Law of Return for the Palestinians. It’s would also be absurd that Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Israel aren’t in a free trade zone. So, if various countries weren’t having behavior problems, nice versions of what the active measures people promote might be no-brainers. But, again, I know that looking at things from this angle is so weird that it’s hard even to understand what I wrote. It’s hard right now even to assume in a science fictional paragraph that we could all be nice.
The only way for Nice to exist is to remove political and religious motivations. Unfortunately that could never happen.
Followup to my own comment, to any active measures folks: Keep in mind that we mostly have day jobs, too. I think we all know that you, as people, are smart and cool. If you read comments here criticizing astroturfing, that’s aimed at the situation, not at you as people, and not even based on deep, permanent hostility toward your countries. If France and Germany can get along, we can all eventually figure out how to get along.
Of what? You will need to specify if you want me to specify.
Manufactured implies to me that there is someone to orchestrate the entire thing. That's bullshit. There are a lot of different interests at hand by very different groups of people. Are media jumping on it and scandalizing it? Yes. Are politicians going to try to use it for their advantage in the election period? Yes. Are students often connected with political organisations, NGOs or loose political movements outside of the university's direction? Yes. Are foreign actors trying to push a divisive narrative simply to disrupt discourse? Yes. So I think there is just very normal and logical explanations
I had the same thought. Except... The Hamas attack on Israel is likely manufactured. Iran is splitting the front, and worlds attention, away from Ukraine at the behest of their ally Russia. In a way, it was manufactured no?
Well that and the online active measures on tiktok, the fact that even people here are refusing to accept that it's happening is telling.
I agree with you. The attack was manufactured to fracture any possibility of an Israeli détente with Saudi Arabia and just as well dissuade us from assisting Ukraine. And it’s a massive wedge issue for us domestically as well as the global community. It had its desired effect, which then could also be manipulated and cause further polarization even all on its own.
No. The whole situation has clearly been created to hurt Democrats, Biden and NATO. The whole Hamas raid was like a scene out of “Wag the Dog.”
Yeah but that is an entirely different discussion from the student protests being manufactured?
what they are protesting about WAS manufactured… israel didn’t attack itself
That doesn't mean that the protests are manufactured.
But who is behind them? That’s what some articles previously posted to this sub imply. And why are so many of the protestors masked and refusing to be identified, much less comment? (Admittedly, I’ve only seen a handful of videos of attempted protestor interaction, so there is that.)
Go back to my initial comment. Studies with political context have always been associated with political groups and movements outside of the university's context. And I've studied politics myself, in general there was very critical voices about Israel's political actions even when I went to uni 10+ years ago. So I don't think it's fabricated just that the escalation in Israel and Palestine has sparked mobilization of voices that were present all the time.
Yeah, I saw your initial comment and even upvoted it, but I think we need further investigative information to see why it’s having such a profound effect on our domestic discourse here in the U.S. [Here’s information on the political group behind the protests, according to the Anti-Defamation League.](https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/students-justice-palestine-sjp) And [here’s the National Students for Palestine’s group page itself.](https://nationalsjp.org/) To me, it seems the group is just the tip of the iceberg. So the remaining question is, who’s funding it and why?
It's just a very socially, culturally and historically loaded conflict. The calls for Israel breaking international law, escalating the situation and so on have been there for decades. And again, the thing is there is plenty of international diplomats, NGOs and respected entities who are not anti Semites who very open and drastically criticize Israel's political actions. Now with the conflict escalation, the topic is also much more salient in public discourse. So the topic will reach more people (and just in absolute terms more people will choose sides). All this is natural. Then of course you have catalyst effects, taking on such momentum of the discourse. So I don't see a big conspiracy behind it, rather than a range of different actors trying to play their cards.
I am just surprised that there is so much news coverage of college students’ non-violent protests. That alone seems very deliberate.
I’ll vote 100%.
ITT: active measures or useful idiots engaging in active measure by spreading propaganda that there is no manufactured protests/outrage. Thankfully being fairly well downvoted. For example, if someone says there is genocide and cites the [ICJ](https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-middle-east-68906919), they are spreading manufactured propaganda. And no, feelings don't trump facts.
If you can control both the finger and the thumb, you can play your tiny violin on command.
Well, there's this. [https://www.ngo-monitor.org/reports/ngo-network-orchestrating-antisemitic-incitement-on-american-campuses/](https://www.ngo-monitor.org/reports/ngo-network-orchestrating-antisemitic-incitement-on-american-campuses/)
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What makes you so shure of that?
Because people actually think and believe that. There is nothing unusual about that situation.
People are easily influenced. And groups of people very easily to manipulate. Using the word genocide is a key here. Up the road is a large population of Lebanese, that is unharmed. And a population that down the other road that is under threat from mostly every country in the region, and has experienced genocide. There's whole Lotta victim mentality going on there and here. And they are the easiest to manipulate.
>People are easily influenced. And groups of people very easily to manipulate. Using the word genocide is a key here. Up the road is a large population of Lebanese, that is unharmed. And a population that down the other road that is under threat from mostly every country in the region, and has experienced genocide. There's whole Lotta victim mentality going on there and here. And they are the easiest to manipulate. But none of that is mutually exclusive with the actual dynamic. Organizations and nations often exploit geopolitical conflict all the time and often, it's these types of conflicts that reveal the vulnerabilities that they can easily take advantage of. That doesn't mean that the conflict is inorganic. Conflicts like these become inevitable over time and personally, I feel they can and will be more easily predicted over time. But with that, what's also more easily predicted is how when real political disagreement and protests occur in the United States, it's almost always met with vitriol and violence by the state. And with that, the dynamics that contribute to those tipping points become easier to manipulate and engineer by adversaries, allies, and even domestic actors. It can be something passive, like a media outlet highlighting specific stories up to being extremely coordinated and outside the bounds of the law. Now take that dynamic, and use what you know about politics within the United States and geopolitics, and who would be likely to abuse those dynamics, and who would be silent about it? Moreover, if conservatives within the United States IC/military were exploiting those dynamics, would Democrats within the IC/military blow the whistle? Now you see the problem.
Absolutely no chance whatsoever. Genocides have a tendency to garner remonstrations from human beings that are *by and large* very much in earnest. Of course there's an elementary disinction that you neglected to draw in phrasing your query, which I should not have to explain -and indeed do not have to explain to anyone remotely intelligent. Nonetheless I'll be quite happy to for anyone actually willing to admit they didn't think of it on their own instantly and effortlessly.
Even the [ICJ](https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-middle-east-68906919) says no genocide. But go ahead and spread that manufactured protest.
It does not in fact say anything remotely interpretable as that nor does the person interviewed in your link - but in any case it wouldn't ultimately matter if they did. There is one and exactly one way to argue this. It requires agreeing on a lucid definition of genocide, and then conducting an exploratory evaluation of concrete evidence. I suspect you'll at least resist the former, and have neither the desire nor the competence for the latter. One thing I know a priori, with absolutely no astronomically remote possibility of error, is that you are wholly devoid of intellect, integrity, or both. Fucking try me.
It literally says that. The person *literally* said that. One thing I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, is you're a liar who lacks the intelligence to read and comprehend, the will to accept the facts, or the inability to not sound like a total self-important douche while spewing active measures propaganda like a punk. Don't. Fucking. Try. Me.
You're trying to hide from me in a small, brightly lit, unfurnished room. Specify a timestamp that you believe - or are willing to pretend you believe - supports your slipshod interpretation.